


Gentle Strength

by Waistcoat35



Series: The Nature Diaries of Two Old Frenchmen [2]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: First Kiss, Flowers, Fluff, Gardening, Grass Snakes, Introspection, Javert POV, Javert needs a hug, Javert to Valjean, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Nature, POV Second Person, Wildlife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 09:58:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13901628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: You are stronger and faster than I, and you hold my heart in those same calloused palms as though it is a small, trusting reptile – all without even knowing it, so easily able to take it and crush it and throw the pieces into the water –





	Gentle Strength

You’re in the garden again, ivy and honeysuckle forming a gentle halo over your head as you tame the unruly weeds around your sweet peas. You never rip the dandelions up or yank the celandines’ stalks the way I once handled criminals and gamins darting around. Instead, you replant them in a second box for the windowsill, giving them their own room to grow – I have often seen you treat the street urchins in much the same manner, pressing a coin into a grubby palm the way you sprinkle fertiliser, giving them an escape from the deepest swell of the gutter to a spot with a little more sunlight. It would seem you have bettered me in such areas, just as you have with gardening.

I watch from your (our? When did that happen? How strange) back door, sweat sticking your shirt to your back. This way I see the muscles strain in your back, stretching idly when you lean forward to ease a new bulb into the hole left by each carefully uprooted weed. You are truly the best of men, for many good men are also weak men, good because they lack the capacity to do harm. That is all well and good, certainly; but surely there is something far greater and purer in being able to level a forest, and instead choosing to help it grow. Being able to break a man’s bones and instead nursing him back to health.

There’s a small grass snake in the shrubs near your feet, and as I watch you it inches over your boot. You lay a hand down flat, and soon its lithe body is coiled around your wrist, upper half in your palm. You let the creature weave between your fingers, its forked tongue picking up your scent. I wonder if it can smell old books and fresh pollen and wax paper, the way I can; like I do when I’m pressed close to you, taking refuge from the world in the safe space between your neck and shoulder. It would seem that showing kindness towards wayward wild creatures has become something of a habit of yours.

Even now I could trace the tendons in your forearms. The snake is a mere length of scale and muscle; if you so wished, you could have it hanging limp from your fist – and yet you don’t. The thought never even crosses your mind, not even as briefly as a cloud on a summer’s day, a swallow flitting into the space between roof and attic. This is what makes you good, I think. It would be so easy for you to harm me, as well; so very, very easy. It scares me, even though I know you would not do such a thing. You are stronger and faster than I, and you hold my heart in those same calloused palms as though it is a small, trusting reptile – all without even knowing it, so easily able to take it and crush it and throw the pieces into the water –

Oh dear. These thoughts have strangled me, my breath suddenly coming too quickly and yet too sparingly. You turn from where you’ve been crouched, gentle smile becoming something a little more concerned, and despite my attempts to force out words, to say that I’m perfectly alright, you place the snake back in its clump of grass and come over, taking my wrist in careful (yet strong – so very strong,) fingers. Two of them hover over my pulse, but this is sadly useless as your very presence makes my heart jump unnaturally so, preventing you from taking its rate as reference.

You enquire again as to whether I am well, and I know not how to answer without revealing my concerns – so I do just that, but in far less words. I lean in and slowly, ever so slowly, I press our mouths together. Just quickly, just for a moment. I trust you not to tear my heart to shreds, but I still tense when you reach for me. Something sad sparks in your eyes when I do so, and I’m not sure why – but my confusion evaporates as the gesture becomes an embrace. Hmm – just as I thought. Books. Pollen. Wax paper. There are other things this time as well; soil after it has rained, spices from Toussaint’s cakes, a strange musk that seems to be comprised of worn leather and boot polish. I realise then that you have begun to smell like my uniform, the result of many a greeting embrace or hand clasp when I return from work.

Words do not need to be said here – if we spoke them they would be kept safe by the birds and the clouds and the stars, but we trust one another enough to keep them safe just between the two of us. Pulling away again, your hand finds my wrist once more, and this time you give a flicker of a grin when you feel my pulse flutter. Gently, still ever so gently, I am led towards the border where you have been working. The snake is still there, tongue whisking back and forth as it tastes the air, registers another presence alongside your own.

Despite my intrusion, it is all too happy to return to your palm – but this time, you use your other hand, still clutching my wrist, to encourage it to transfer to my arm. I try not to start at the motion, and any argument I might have had is stilled along with my breath as your thumb swipes a calming trail across my forearm. Then there are dry scales sliding over my own palm, and my own eyes meet little golden ones, like drops of dew hanging off a sunflower. I was never so given to prose before – is there some kind of higher power forcing my hand and bleeding words onto my tongue, or have you finally managed to make a poet out of me? We shall probably never know.

The creature and I regard one another carefully as your voice fades in and out of my concentration. Normally, whether it may seem like it or not, I am always listening to you – always letting every word slide around me, much like this small reptile. However, just now I am rather preoccupied with the soft clench of muscle around my hand. You are still speaking, and now I am trying to listen. These creatures are so cruelly judged by society as a whole, you say. Feared and cursed because of their wayward appearance, distrusted for no reason other than that they are outsiders from God’s circle of other creatures. They stop food supplies from being diminished by rodents, protect crops from the malicious intent of insects. And yet despite the gift of their protection, their small skulls and wiry frames are so often crushes underfoot, stamped and scattered for fear of their biting domestic animals and attacking children.

 _You know_ , I think as I continue to gaze at the reptile, _we may have more in common than I thought. I rather like you._

God may have cast the snake away from his circle, you say, may have cursed it and crippled it and beaten it into the ground, (your eyes are flashing rather fiercely now, Monsieur,) but it will yet find it’s place in the garden of the lord, as it has in the garden of two old men who have fallen in love. Sundrop eyes and grey-green ones are both fixed on me, and as the owner of each pair squeezes one of my hands in their own way, none of us are sure whether we are truly talking about grass snakes anymore.


End file.
